Jewish themes in an ancient curse tablet

JEWISH THEMES in a recently translated curse tablet:

Deciphered Ancient Tablet Reveals Curse of Greengrocer

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 21 December 2011 Time: 11:37 AM ET

A fiery ancient curse inscribed on two sides of a thin lead tablet was meant to afflict, not a king or pharaoh, but a simple greengrocer selling fruits and vegetables some 1,700 years ago in the city of Antioch, researchers find.

Written in Greek, the tablet holding the curse was dropped into a well in Antioch, then one of the Roman Empire's biggest cities in the East, today part of southeast Turkey, near the border with Syria.

The curse calls upon Iao, the Greek name for Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, to afflict a man named Babylas who is identified as being a greengrocer. The tablet lists his mother's name as Dionysia, "also known as Hesykhia" it reads. The text was translated by Alexander Hollmann of the University of Washington.

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I agree with Professor Hoffman that the text is not necessarily Jewish. Ancient magic in the Near East and Mediterranean was extremely eclectic and often drew on Jewish themes alongside Classical, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Christian ones.